AS English Language BA Class

Wear Sunscreen.

This week we will be focusing a lot about writing advice. In these writing tasks, it is important to consider both your tone and audience. I’ve found another piece of writing from a column for you, an essay entitled “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young”. It was written Mary Schmich for the Chicago Tribuneand is most commonly known by the title Wear Sunscreen. It was set to music by Australian Director Baz Luhrmann (The guy who directed that adaption of The Great Gatsby with a film score by Jay-Z). We’re going to listen to this Baz Luhrmann version, but here is the original essay for you to look at. Tell me in the comments below about the tone and audience:

Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young

by Mary Schmich

“Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who’d rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there’s no reason we can’t entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.

I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.”

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2 thoughts on “Wear Sunscreen.”

This speech was very engaging and interesting. It is said that ‘advice is a form of nostalgia’, which implies that the speaker is giving advice on being careful when to take advice, which is ironic. This also shows that advice is based on experience which means it is all a different form of someone else’s truth. The only solid advise here backed up by a factual basis is wear sunscreen which is probably why the speaker decided to start with this piece of advice and prove the point. The point is that most advice is simply how a person feels and it shouldn’t or can’t apply to everyone. The speaker encourages you to always listen to someone willing to give advice but to not always take it. This is an important life hack. By starting with wear sunscreen he has immediately caught everyones attention as it is unusual which even makes it humorous. He doesn’t give boring monotonous life advice that graduate students have probably heard one thousand times before instead he gives small and weird pieces of advice that would actually make people happy

Very good, Leah! This could be a stand-alone commentary. I think that, as you say, starting with the advice about sunscreen is very cunning actually. It’s almost an extremely subtle persuasive tactic. That is to say, since it’s an easily adopted behaviour, maybe it makes the rest of it seem like easily adopted behaviour?

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